I will be Twittering on Uruguay for The Guardian during the World Cup draw in Cape Town.
Expect a heavy Uruguayan flavour in the coming hours. A virtual Dulce de Leche of Uruguayan football.
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Thinking With Our Feet
On December 3-5, 2009, Toronto’s York University hosts an international conference “Global Football: History, Gender and Nation.” Inspired by the upcoming 2010 World Cup, scholars and journalists will analyze a rich set of topics, including the transnational history of the African game, the Israeli-Palestinian encounter through film and literature, Mussolini, masculinity, and football, and fan cultures in Sweden. Simon Kuper is giving the keynote address. Click here for more details about the conference.
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Life, Love, and Football in Kenya
In the year of Africa’s World Cup, it’s easy to overlook the host continent’s “other” players. Take these teenage girls in rural Kenya, for example. They organize, manage, referee, and play football in the Moving the Goalposts program. But this is not just about the game. Health education and social support are vital components of Moving the Goalposts.
Parents in Kilifi District have embraced the project: “But I have one problem in my house with Mbeyu [her daughter] and this issue of football,” says the mother of one of the players. “If she comes home from the football field and they have won, we’ll hear the whole story, how she scored, we’ll all laugh, the whole house will know. . . . But if they have lost, ha, Mbeyu—she’ll be ill and the whole house will be ill! . . . If she’s lost, there no laughter in the house.” (Read more of the girls’ stories in Sarah Forde’s gripping book Playing by Their Rules.)
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The Screamer in Sudan
In case you missed the goal of the World Cup playoffs. Here it is. Antar Yahia’s screamer in Sudan.
Relive the goal. Relive the celebrations. Be in no doubt: This is for 1982. This is for the players with the peppery hair and tears in their eyes. This is for the players who were robbed.
Ireland may get their revenge vicariously through Algeria. The Desert Foxes will show Monsieur Henry and his merry band of collaborators no mercy.
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Khartoum Crossbar Challenge
Algeria’s Rafik MacSaifi celebrates against the auld enemy in Omdurman.
Will we see an All Whites Haka? The World Cup will be richer for the experience.
I had been keen on seeing Bahrain qualify. Bahrain were the sort of quick counter-attacking outfit capable of the odd 3-2 upset.
New Zealand inspire less confidence as Giant Killers. But who knows? A Haka just before kick-off might be worth a buried chicken or two.
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Pinned in their Own Half
Belated respect to the All Whites. New Zealand represent!
Bahrain’s unexpected defeat leaves the Arab World with only one representative in South Africa. Sayef Mohammed Adnan’s penalty miss in Wellington will have done more than just dampen the spirits on the Emir’s beach. It invites a significant Arab cultural deficit extending well beyond Bahrain.
This may well go unnoticed or be easily forgotten by Arab scholars and Arab media busy with grim development statistics and wars or captivated by ceremonial comings and goings and fashionable American and European diplomats and stars. It should not.